Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)? (Full Documentary) | Amplified

there's a way to make an entrance my destiny it was now a conspiracy of witches download veli today you have all the time you need sir another second extra [Applause] [Music] thank you 25 years ago i had the good fortune of playing a character in a film called midnight cowboy i was rehearsing this speech here yesterday and i came in here today and just found out that the wonderful lovely talented man who sang everybody's talking in that movie harry nielsen died today and it would seem weird not to have an appropriate moment for him he was a great artist [Applause] [Music] most of the time when i mention his name people go who or when you say harry nielsen everybody said no harry so either they they get it right away or they have no [Music] he brought idea to the i mean no copying anybody he was the closest thing to an american version of the beatles [Music] beautiful beautiful voice soft velvety and you'd have your headphones on and that voice would come through you almost couldn't play because it was so beautiful seriously beautiful to me there's always like a fallen angel so there's this weird combination of something heavenly and beatific about him and then just dirt and darkness [Music] that you'll ever do harry would turn up at your door at four o'clock in the morning and you kind of knew that the next three days of your life we're gonna be an adventure i'd defer harry man i don't know how far you want me to go [Music] harry was a big bunny with really sharp teeth just the sweetest wonderful guy that could be the nastiest son of a in two seconds right after that he was his own worst enemy i mean just the drink and the drugs alone he spent most of his life in pursuit of a good time and he caught it and it caught him in the end [Music] [Music] i was born harry edward nielsen iii on father's day 1941. well in 1941 a happy father had a son and by 1944 the father walked out the door and in 45 the mom and sons didn't lie but who could tell in 46 if the two were to survive no no no it seems to me that it's pretty clear that harry was profoundly disturbed by the fact that he was abandoned by his father to not have had all the conversations with a father that one would want but it would create creates quite a longing heart and he had that harry i think really fought for legitimacy in many ways uh fought hard for it my mother and i lived in an upstairs apartment with six rooms we lived with my grandmother my grandfather two uncles uh my sister when she was born that's the way we live crowded but busy enough not to get bored i think my mother was always sort of like she wasn't a stage mother or anything but i think she herself wanted to be in show business at one time i think that sort of rubbed off on me and when i was a little child used to put me on the piano and sing songs to the adults you know i used to lay in bed when i was about 10 or 11 and the solitude of the small dark room in brooklyn if i wasn't counting to a million or to infinity i would put a pillow over my head and put on a show for an invisible audience and now presenting me doing my impression of the great al jolson and i would my knowledge of him now i love him let me ask you harry nielsen can you do james cagney you judy rat uh how about bing crosby well that's amazing how about this guy one time harry and i were both in new york at the same time and he called me and asked me if i'd like to go out and see where he was born it was a highly charged emotional event for both of us the limousine took us out to brooklyn he couldn't give the directions but he knew them when he got to the intersections and we got lower and lower through more bridges and tunnels and dank alleys and back streets and garbage and finally we got to a place with a brick wall and a sign that said starve a rat cover your garbage he was shaking and weeping in the car because this was where he came from it was obvious this was a very big reconciliation for harry something that he had been shelving for so long it was the very thing that drove him a sense of poverty they had financial troubles that had serious repercussions when he was a kid he had to eat dog food at one point that's all they could afford i know it was difficult for him i mean his mom was an alcoholic she ultimately got sober and very fascinating woman when you met her you could see where harry came from because she was like a bigger version of harry in a lot of ways that same kind of outwardness and interest [Music] she did pretty much whatever she had to do to survive she took whatever job she had to she lived where she had to she even had to write some checks that didn't always find their way to the bank and get paid at one point they needed the rent money and he held up a liquor store i don't know if you know that story not for 17 and give me 17 you know he was forced to do a lot of things as a young man that made him i suppose stronger and didn't weaken him just made him stronger and more self-reliant and more confident the years went passing quickly but not fast enough for him so he closed his eyes to 55 then he opened them up again and when they looked around his saw clown and the clown seemed very gay and he said i'd like to join that circus clown my dad was like probably the only real father figure he had you know because he spent a few years with us and my dad was just a regular you know regular dad you know and it was like a stable kind of thing in his life you know and he always had fond memories of that it was 1957 it was june a hot june i lost my job as a caddy because of a fight pushing and shoving nothing bad but enough for the caddy master to fire me when i went home that night i told my aunt and uncle what had happened and during dinner my uncle said skeeter i don't know how to say this gracefully but i don't think we can afford you i didn't hesitate i simply said you won't have to worry about me anymore i left the house feeling like holden caulfield half sad half scared half itching to get on the road and start an adventure across country which would last me a lifetime i was 15. well it followed every railroad track and every highway sign and he had a girl in each new town in the towns he left behind and the open road was the only road he knew but the color of his dream was slowly turning into blue i moved to california to east l.a great improvement and then my best friend at the time we were like the poor man's everly brothers we had an old tape recorder and we used to sing um everly type tunes then we found out we were making up lyrics then we started adding changing melodies so we find out oh now we're writing tunes you know i just turned 18 and i was a dropout i worked at the paramount theater in los angeles for three years when i was assistant manager anyway the cashiers were going to work for banks i figured since i was their boss and i could reconcile books so i went and made an application i wasn't actually a banker i used to run a computer center 132 people were working on what we laughingly call the swinging shift you know then i supervise the handling of about 200 million dollars a night in checks [Music] not to get off work about one o'clock in the morning and uh go to the bar until two in los angeles and drink very quickly i'd write songs all night in the daytime i'd hustle the songs and then go to work at the bank i didn't stay up every other night for seven years but it did stay up a lot of nights my partner and i were were in the office um one particular day and harry came in and he said what are you guys doing in here and he said oh we're riding and we schmoozed for a little bit i said what do you do and he says i'm i'm a singer and i'm a songwriter and i said oh great play something sing sing one of your tones it's just no good anymore when you walk through the door of an empty room and then you go inside and set a table for one it's no fun when you spend a day without her i looked at my partner and he looked at me and we both understood that we were not supposed to respond the way we felt because if we did we would leap up in the air and and and give him the world to sign with our publishing company so he finished his tunes and i said gee that's great harry and i said would you be interested in a publishing arrangement and he said oh yeah man that'd be great i believe we paid him 50 a week to write for our publishing firm and that was heavy bread for us [Music] there's no song without her [Music] hey [Music] i was still working at the bank and i i hated the beetles because i said you know they're beating me to the punch and then there was that moment when you say well you're either with him or a guinnem and i decided to go for the ladder and i said yeah they really are that good we'd be arguing about the beatles and he'd say the beatles are the only band there's only one band that's the beatles no one else matters see i just assumed that people would discover you that they they would spot in you the talent that i knew i had i used to do demos and did jingles and hung around with people who are in the business you know you meet one and he introduces you to a friend of his who knows a songwriter and somebody knows a producer and then you the ultimate test is when you say can i play you this [Music] the monkeys were recording an album called headquarters and uh it was the first album that we had been allowed to choose all our own material and record everything ourselves i don't remember what happened behind the scenes but this kid showed up named harry nielsen with a song called cuddly toy you're not the only cuddly toy that was ever enjoyed by any boy without a fight when davey jones said he would uh record cuddly toy the music publisher that was there lester sill was the guy's name he says we walked outside in the parking lot and lester said you can quit the bank [Music] ladies and gentlemen in the center ring presenting nelson and his shandamanian shadow poe [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] it was difficult to find the right niche it wasn't until he went over to rca and got with rick gerard i think that rick gerard really played a very important part in his success i felt that harry had incredible potential that harry could be a monster artist and frankly i was probably the only one that really believed that because he was so different i'm leaving here this morning but i don't know where i've been i'm going home to take my bath but i'll be back again [Music] the thing about harry that makes people feel good is his singing is singing voice he's very very very good singer he's the best singer of our generation i mean harry's the best singer this morning [Music] [Music] do [Applause] [Music] there's always been an american music a guy with a beautiful voice that that people loved uh mccartney had it it's a voice that people loved and harry had one too [Music] i would say it was a medical instrument his voice because it would heal you you felt an overwhelming wave of warmth from that voice [Music] is [Music] think of the money we'd [Music] it was my mother's biggest fan [Music] i think we were at least up to eight track by then if not 16 track and he could overdub himself and he was so good at that saying wonderful harmony lines off the top of his head his voice blended great with himself and it just helped open up a whole new area for us to explore a particular record was released with a lot of these overdubs and a critic in reviewing the album said it was a wonderful album and i loved the music but nilsson should have credited the background singers they were so great not realizing the background singers were nielsen [Music] i remember at the time saying harry be careful crossing the street be careful just walking around because this is going to be a big career and we need you around [Music] derrick taylor was the publicist for the beatles and and derek was one of these guys he was very like dashing look at earl flynn i always thought of derek as being your old flint and again very very bright bright witty sophisticated we were in safeway car park on la brea and i went to do some shopping and i came out and derek so i just heard this incredible man singing a song called 1941 and he was just called nilsson the next thing i knew derek had got a dozen albums and he sent them to everybody new including george and john and paul and people in england not because he represented harry but just because he loved him so one day i was early five in the morning i got a phone call and there's this voice long distance hello hello who is it it's john john who it's john lennon is this really john he says yeah i just wanted to say a fantastic man but listen to all weekend you know he's great great great you know he's just fantastic uh the following monday i got a phone call from paul how are you just calling to say you're fantastic you know you're just oh you're great you know and i really love what you did and all that stuff you know derek played it for us and hope to see you soon and clunk the next monday morning i get up comb my hair five o'clock in the morning waiting for a call from rainbow there was no call but he ended up being our best man at our wedding so that's okay uh now we'd like to uh spend a few minutes and talk about song construction which is one of the most important parts of songwriting for any of those aspiring songwriters in the audience i have a few comments to make first of all uh in construction i might say that you have to get to know your song you gotta take it apart put it back together again keep it clean because someday in combat it might save your life and that's the yes and there's kind of this this stephen foster element to what he wrote it was a really sweet and sentimental and i think that that he balanced that out with a with a with an edge i've always thought of him as a musical poet and his rhyme schemes and his words were just out of the ordinary his range of writing is very broad if you look at all the songs he's written he's written all kinds of songs you know and the things that he picked to write about at that time were subjects that regular people most people were just writing about love it was almost through post-war all the writing all love songs but harry was pushing the envelope sit beside the breakfast table think about your troubles buy yourself a cup of tea and think about the bubbles you can take your teardrops and [Music] then taken to the ocean to be eaten by some fishes melodically he had very experimental melodies that went from very low to very high it was an experimental mallet at mellitus he had a gift uh for melody which is a rare uh [Music] inexplicable sort of talent to have i mean people like mccartney has it schubert had it uh elton john has it harry had that that gift [Music] my pillow crying before i know my love is gone from me i thought this is gonna be really easy because i just i just walked out of the bank and walked into the uh recording uh business and suddenly i was getting phone calls model preminger and john lennon and all that is that all there is to it you know nothing to it fantastic i think i'll stay he gave a lot of confidence from that first album a lot of confidence because i think he finally realized what he could do and what he could be as an artist and still remaining honest and true to himself there was always a whimsical quality to harry but the thing i love most is the sweetness it was a sweetness and a joy and a sense of the world and nature i mean like when he writes about his desk you know he he brings things to life in that sense of whatever he touched or wrote about suddenly old sparkled never needs a rest and i've never once heard it cry i've never seen a tease it's always there to please me from nine to five [Music] [Applause] [Music] a giant of all times [Music] good old desk was g.o.d that was harry's way of talking about god he had a lot of conflicts about all of that business and so he wrote a song called good old desk and that's the way his mind worked and i loved that i thought that was just so original i was dialing a telephone i got a busy signal and it was going beep beep beep beep beep beep beep one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do i just let it keep stay busy and just wrote it on the phone while i was listening to this busy signal you know [Music] when i heard it i thought this is this is one of the great nelson songs and later on obviously it became a huge hit so but not by harry unfortunately but it still helped to build his credibility and that nelson mystique he just came on the scene you know blasted onto the scene and he just started influencing people i'm sure he influenced the beatles as much as the beatles influenced him well everybody's records influence all the minds you know once everything influences everything nielsen's my favorite group dreams are nothing more than wishes and a wish is just a dream the beatles endorsed harry they called him their favorite group harry was there was their favorite group [Laughter] i think he was quite pleased about that [Laughter] they you know pronounced him to the world and said listen to this man and we did i remember that's one of the first times i've ever seen him kind of patting himself on the back and tooting his own horn he said you know they they think i'm like the fifth beatle i got a phone call there was some dirt too uh joey said hey uh the lads the boys the fabs would they like you to come over and join in the recession they're recording every road i felt right jesus this is about as good as it gets the first night in london i spent at john lennon's house uh it gives me like a hug he smiled and he put me at ease instantly so i for some reason i would say anything in front of this man it would be okay that night we spent the entire night with a little uh help from our friends uh talking just sitting and talking all night till dawn until seven or eight o'clock in the morning and john and on and on and on and on about marriage life death divorce women what's it all about you know what are we doing i think that harry had an incredible respect for john it was like a fan you know [Music] but um [Music] and john john loved him too so it was a good kind of combination i think he said that he and john were a lot alike that they'd had similar childhoods and i wasn't surprised by that because i you know it was clear that john had a lot of anger he didn't hide that harry hit it but john didn't so i thought that was very interesting harry after he went over to england and was with the beatles are with john and i really don't know which he changed [Music] he changed and became somebody else that i no longer [Music] the knew weeps and having wefts can weep no more but still it cries for me it cries in sympathy it knows that you are gone [Music] don't leave me baby out of the blue i got a telegram that said i'm finding another producer and basically that was the end of harry's my relationship [Music] and that's a pretty stunning statement to make and i hesitated to say it but facts are facts and that's what happened i never saw harry again after that telegram never spoke to him never saw him not out of malice from my point we just never ran into each other or anything i think if i if i did i would have said what what was that all about [Music] [Music] baby [Music] harry told me that for many years he thought his father had died in world war ii his father was a seabee in world war ii then in the late 1960s harry found out he found out not only that his father was alive but that he had remarried and had a family when he was about 27 years old he found out his father was living in florida he went to visit him um you know i think that must have been very hard on him he didn't say a lot about it you know he didn't say it was emotional it was you know and i saw the picture of his dad and he didn't even really look that much alike so when i asked him about it he just kind of like fluffed it off he's like yeah it's interesting you know but uh he didn't uh extrapolated on it at all so i think and by what he didn't say i felt that it was painful for him you know and he wasn't going to talk about it he wouldn't go on about it at all and i met him and that was that where's that joe where's that joe where's that joe buck where is our joe buck look at this crap yeah where's that joe buck you're due here at four o'clock you know what you can do with them dishes and if you ain't mad enough to do it for yourself i'd be happy to oblige i really would [Music] everybody's [Music] it was impossible not to be aware of harry after midnight cowboy because that song just went everywhere oh yeah yeah i mean i was a big nelson fan i mean ever since midnight cowboy i mean and then his most famous song and he didn't write it i love the irony of that and he would appreciate that i'm going well the sun keeps [Music] he was a brilliant interpreter so he could take that fred neil song and make it his own everybody's talking was not written for midnight cowboy everybody's talking was harry single and it had been out before the film i was approached by jerry hellman and john schlesinger and asked if i'd be interested in writing a song for midnight cowboy title song they showed me four reels of uncut material and i thought what this could be the best movie ever made you know this is incredible you bet you bet he wrote i guess the lord must be in new york city they also went to bob dylan asked him to write a song i understand that one was lay lady lay that dylan wrote they also went to joni mitchell and asked her to write a song all of them wrote songs for the film and submitted it to the producers and they listened to all the songs and after hearing all this they decided to stick with everybody's talking which they had been using as a temporary track until they found a song for and they just got used to it so used to it they didn't want to drop it and left it in thank you very much midnight cowboy won the oscar for the best picture of the year at the same time harry won the grammy for the best contemporary vocal performance [Music] oh [Music] hello hi is it terry yes hi um i was gonna ask you something well why didn't you when are you gonna have a concert oh i don't do conscious that's for other people who want to do that huh you're not gonna have a concert ever no you know many many people are curious why harry never performed live didn't make touring a part of his career didn't go on the road and all of those issues and there are many many many answers which are interesting and valid he just couldn't do it [Music] i don't know it was [Music] fear of flying or fear of falling or or i don't know what it was harry was athletic trim cheerful fun to be around but harry was the most insecure person i've ever known he just didn't have any self-esteem so i think that would have to have been part of the reason he was quite shy and i don't think he believed that anyone would particularly want to see him on stage he said i just don't want to have to be on at eight o'clock at night and he was a lot like that you you know he he answered to no man no man he was terrified and i i don't remember exactly why but he was terrified to do a live performance and he'd mentioned that when he started he was he was in the late 50s and he was doing a i think a duo with another guy everly brothers songs and they got up to perform and they were nervous he was nervous and for whatever reason it was horrible it didn't work i laughed and kind of really scar to him that probably was one of those things where he didn't want to get burned twice if the way to become a rock star was to make an album and then go and promote the album and then go out on tour harry figure i'm going to do it another way i'm going to find a way to do it you don't have to go onto it part of it was about just proving that you didn't have to do it there are very few guys that have had the success that he had without doing that and he he almost pulled it off well he did pull it off we're sitting here doing this this documentary i mean when he was young he sang in the band and his fans all looked the same and the fans he had were younger than [Music] well isn't it nice the parents would say well isn't it nice you got someone someone to idolize he must look twice the size i think it's great harry was offered a bbc special to be produced by stanley dorfman who was doing in concert series and in concert means in concert that means there would be an audience but harry didn't do audiences and i said he could do anything he wanted this is not this is bbc it's not like american television you literally can have the freedom of the studio once he realized he could come and play have more or less control of what he wanted to do he said yeah why not [Music] oh [Music] we went into a studio and made it one afternoon we made up a show with harry um at the piano uh he'd do a song and say well what should we do now then we said well let's do three harry's [Music] come on baby yes this is real come on [Music] it was extremely creative from harry's point of view because he was having fun and that's the only way he would do television [Music] thank you listener now enjoy some randy newman it's so hard it's all hard it's so hard living without you and he actually reached over and grabbed my wrist and he said i want you to hear something and i want well i'm going to hear some i want to hear some harry nielsen and he took me and started playing endless endless randy newman songs i mean he was so enamored with randy newman and that's all he would talk about listen to this listen to this he loved to do things differently he just couldn't go in and do the same thing over and over again that would have been very safe very easy but it wouldn't have satisfied him the notion of harry doing the whole album of randy newman is i i'm sure unnerving to the people at the label who are waiting for the whole the new uh harry album with all of his new songs so he took some turns that were obviously harry turns not uh you know career oriented having said that there was no better consistently great composer at that time than randy newman i think he was just writing immense stuff and harry realized that and wanted to be the guy to showcase he was unlike uh most other writers that i knew in that in that he had uh uh he had an open mind and he was generous with praise and really enthusiastic about stuff that he liked [Music] it's a pretty big honor for me i'm you know milestone in my life in some ways okay that's enough for energyman uh tonight let's see i think i'll tell stories about marriage [Music] most people don't know it but in 1964 harry got married for the first time the marriage didn't last very long and there were no children of the marriage her name was sandy and i said what was that like he said i just did that to get out of the war and now obviously you know i mean she was a nice girl she had a son and you know i don't know what happened but he but that's how he would you know i just married again before you know so i guess that was another painful but he would you know he just had a way of doing that you know it was painful to him or he didn't want to talk about it he would just he would have these one-liners that would dismiss it subject closed each night [Music] [Applause] [Music] harry got married for a second time new year's eve of 1969 in vegas when he married diane and harry and diane did have a child a child uh named zach zachary nine n-i-n-e nilsen little fella you're so tired [Music] you can hardly lift your hand but you wanna hear a story before you go to bed so if you'll be quiet and listen patiently [Music] i'll sing you a song that my mother sang he was absolutely thrilled it was great and he was just he was just you know he was just a typical new father and he was you know he's got a boy and you know it was wonderful it was wonderful to see him enjoy that have that in his life my dad wrote this thing on a piece of paper for when when i was a baby he it was just a note to me um even though i couldn't read or and i wasn't old enough to understand it or anything he wrote this note which basically told me how much he loved me and reading it now it just makes me realize that he really did dear zach i stood over you and watched you sleep for 30 minutes this morning someday you will know how i feel as i write these words you are beautiful you moved your toes and feet proportionally to the noise i made you're on top of your blanket an orange blanket with yellow daisies and your pacifier wasn't in from your mouth it had obviously been released with sleep i love you big daddy schmelzen so you know to write something like that obviously there's something there i don't think harry was ready to be a father i think he liked the idea but the reality of parenting it was just too much for him he didn't he didn't have the time or the capacity to do that and he just mostly was absent [Music] part of him wanted to be a parent part of him wanted to be a partner and married but most of him didn't want to be you know he wanted to be out carousing with his buddies drinking tequila every night he didn't want to be in a relationship we were riding back together from new york and trained out to the island you know and he very solemnly said you know we're we're breaking up you know i said oh jesus skeeter he says yeah and you know i said what happened you know he said uh he said we just tried very hard to love each other that's what he said there's there's the the 1941 thing almost mirrored his own life and it's and i'm i'm pretty sure that's not how he intended it to be uh but it did you know in 1941 a happy father had a son 1944 his father walked right out the door and that's almost exactly what happened except in the 70s [Music] now you tell me is this a story or is this a story yeah dad sure it's an okay story it's sort of okay are you kidding me just okay come on it's more than oh it's good i like the kid oblio and his dog i think he's a great looking dog great looking oh sure i get it youth imagination the view from the mind's eye you've got a creative little head on your shoulders there son harry was an idea mansi he was an idea man he was just everything was was uh an immediate i mean you know absolute mercury [Music] well it's just an idea i had one night i just i think it was on some kind of weirdness the more you walk around thinking about the idea the more permutations grow out of it you know i just realized it was the world's longest pun and i realized god point of sale point of view point of volume and all those things the point is one of those examples that you it just shows you that harry is unique into himself here was an incredible concept that he made into a musical at a time when musicals couldn't have been more off the charts he wrote all the songs for that and it's a great children's animation very it's like one of the first children's animations i saw that was very kind of lyrical and very funny in a way kind of dark but you know great songs [Music] that's the way it's going to stay [Music] mostly it was philosophical in attitude everybody had a point a philosophical point and point at the support of that in fact even the people who appointed people who pointed clocks pointed cars pointed this houses etc and this little kid was born into the society with a round head and so how he's ostracized and kicked out and beat up and all but the kid proves he has a point without having a point harry loved those philosophical turns and twists he has a point there [Music] he called me up one morning said i got to come over and talk to you he came over my house in laurel canyon and um he's he asked me if i'd like to produce him i said i would love to under one condition that he had to trust me and let me call the shots which he agreed to one more put it away let's nail this mother to the wall richard's a great producer really talented guy and he and i again a tough guy in his own way but you needed a tough guy to deal with harry he couldn't harry could run over people and and a lot of people he did run over and so he needed a counterweight and and richard was that harry don't smoke those come on i stayed home yesterday when you walked into the studio richard was in charge and it was wonderful you know there's like several good takes and it's the kind of thing where there's a great second verse that can be used as the first verse of uh you know it had the brightness to hand-pick musicians and then allow them to feel at least they were free but you were always being wonderfully gently maneuvered by richard you see and then there was harry who also you know knew exactly what he wanted i felt that harry could be my beatles and he in turn i suppose felt that i could be his george martin which i think we did a pretty good job of accomplishing on the nielsen schmielson album that was the goal to make as close to a beatles quality album as possible the first song we did was gotta get up which is the first song on the album and like right from that opening the way the piano starts you could sense that this was gonna be something special gotta get up gotta get out gotta get home before the [Music] morning gotta get home before the sun comes [Music] in some ways he could be completely normal and other times it could be totally eccentric so um one you know once you knew how to roll with the punches it kind of made life interesting in the [Music] hide studio one she paid it for the lime she put the lime in the coconut she drank a boat up she put the lime in the cake he played it for me the first time on guitar and he he just sang it and it was just like straight through no no changes at all [Music] i thought to myself this song really has the potential to be like a little animated cartoon there's like at least three different characters in the song that i can think of so i said why don't you try using different voices think of the doctor so now let me get the streak you put the lime in the coconut he responded to it immediately and um and then you get this this marvelous theatrical performance that has made the song a classic [Music] about halfway through the album we had a difference of opinion that didn't sort of settle itself easily so like two proper gentlemen we decided to have a meeting over high tea at the dorchester hotel to discuss what we were going to do i said harry you do remember that when you came to me and asked me to produce you i asked you uh my only condition was that i would have control creative control he looks me dead in the face and said well i lied and then with that we both looked at our watch and realized that we were late for the session that he was supposed to do his vocal on without you without another word we jumped into a taxi ran down to the studio he went right out and sang the vocal that you hear on the record no i can't forget this evening or your face is you leaving but i guess that's just the way the story goes that was an extraordinary day i mean because also when harry would go for the high notes it was like a trapeze artist you know you knew he could fall and he kept you on the edge of your seat and then he would be there [Music] it's like one of those anthemic things that people say i live with living is without you it's a great great performance just a great all-time nail that song we weren't thinking oh grammy here we come but we think it'd be nice and while we were in japan the nominations had come out and the album of the year record of the year best male vocal performance best engineered record uh i mean whatever category it could have been nominated it was nominated [Music] he was thrilled all of his dreams had come true you know he wanted to have a huge success he had it after the nielsen schmielson album i think he was arguably the finest white male singer on the planet nielsen schmielson is a masterpiece and he was pretty crazy but richard had some control over the situation and that album came out beautifully it was really post nielsen schmielson that the troubles set in because he didn't want richard perry in there he didn't want anybody telling him what to do he was going through a bed period in life and and rather than using that to uh uh you know in a way inspire him or or or trying to be creative with your pain he just let it start the downward spiral that ultimately destroyed him [Applause] [Music] i don't think harry handled success well i think that the more successful he became the more he drank he didn't really feel that he deserved the applaud and the accreditation he was getting and became an alcoholic really just a sort of retreat as a sort of hide away from that that was a difficulty and he knew his mom had the drinking problem runs in the family our grandfather drank charlie martin you know and his mother did runs in family and my mother told him you watch it you watch it this runs to my family he's i know i know i know i know i know it was frustrating because i i didn't have enough of a power in the relationship to say stop you know but i wish i had i don't think carrie expected to live very long both his parents died in their 50s so you know that somehow becomes a factor in how people look at life i think that it's really hard to say that you're a bright man and um just to drink that much or to smoke that much and not address that you're being self-destructive it was one of those things where he just went like 500 miles an hour until he stopped you know whereas most people just kind of cruise and speed up and slow down and then you kind of peter off and eventually your park but he was just [Music] long ago [Music] excuse me it's an artist's prerogative to be indulgent to himself he owes it to everyone else to be indulgent to himself and it's at the cost of what he thinks is what the public might think it might result in that's tough luck [Music] we were best pals you know we hung out together all the time we traveled together we had a blast we'd party together i mean there wasn't anything we didn't do together and worked together and i i was looking at a lifetime of hits [Music] you know i mean you know with the different things that he could do with his voice i mean just when you i mean there was no no limitation as to what you know we were capable of i mean nielsen schmielson was like the warm-up but the second one was son of smilson and i think the cracks authority started to appear by that time he just separated and was going through a divorce with his first wife diane and it hit him really hard he nurtured it like a serpent to his breast he hated it i'm sure he took it as if he's a good catholic boy which i think he essentially was he [Music] took it as a failure that he ended in a divorce and it shows in his material the songs that he would sing you're breaking my heart so you having a single was and still is the greatest promotional vehicle to selling an album when you're more than capable of churning out material that had best commercial potential and at the same time was loaded with artistic integrity what does he come up with is the strongest single possibility you're breaking my heart you're tearing it apart i won't give you the punchline you know the [Music] song you turn it apart everybody knows the word it's hypocrisy at its greatest and it's such a great way to send it up you know you're breaking my heart so you know and what do you say you're breaking my heart darn it that's what he offered as the best you know i mean that that was his his his love song to his ex-wife [Music] he would show up to the studio with a half a bottle of cognac the first half had already been consumed that afternoon he would no longer allow my input into the songs i mean he would just like come up with a song and i'd say well can we talk about this no that's the song that's the vocal and that's why you've got an album that still has has some lovely moments in it but i mean there's no real uh depth or stature to it uh anywhere near what the schmilson album was and i was expecting it to be the next level [Music] i'd rather be dead i'd rather be dead than wet my bed i did everything i could as as you're more as his friend than anything trying to explain to him why you're doing this you know it could be so much better than what we're doing it just you know he was determined to do things the way he wanted to on that album but when the dream comes true you're better off dead it could happen to you [Music] once again [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right give yourselves a big hand [Applause] [Music] now now [Music] he told me that he felt it was [Music] important for his career that he does an album of standards now i love standards and i knew that he could perform them magnificently but i said now is not the time what you really need in your career is to recapture truly recapture where we would left off with nielsen schmielsen to just write the best songs of your career and and we really like roll up our sleeves and just make a killer record no i i have to do the standards album i said well good luck [Music] afraid of darkness and down here's just like night nighttime [Music] i never stopped loving the guy and he me i know that for a fact and so you know what's missing here you know why is this such a sad ending to him what could be a tremendous story and it's because my way of interpreting it harry at that point in his life developed a death wish and he was successful it took him 20 years but he carried it out [Music] i figured my voice was probably at its purest and best at that moment even though i was smoking and drinking doing all the nastiness i figured this is the time to really capture my voice on tape the bells [Music] [Music] for me he got derek taylor to produce the album got gordon jenkins who had been frank sinatra's arranger to arrange it and for the orchestra they got the london philharmonic and they went into the studio and recorded these wonderful songs as only harry could perform them i think of all the work that he did he loved that album more than anything else that he did because those tunes meant a lot to him and he could sing him if you listen to a little touch of smilson in the night and you listen to the way he sung those standards long before this current lemming like rush of pop artist for the standard repertoire harry was singing those songs and singing them [Music] with great class and great dignity and singing them singing them on a level with a sinatra in his own way that was the one of the greatest make-out albums ever made still probably still works too woman needs man and man must have [Music] is his the same old story [Music] the world will always welcome lovers as times goals [Music] if you were in a jam at three o'clock in the morning and there was one person that you could call for help who would it be in america it's like harry nielsen i think i could always call harry night and day and he would come and save you i'm very lucky with friends like that people let me tell you about my best friend he's a warm-hearted person who loved me till the end people let me tell you about my best friend he's a one boy [Music] i think that harry's friendship with john was also very very close but i i don't think it was as intimate as his relationship with ringo starr when ringo starr would give harry nilsson a present for christmas than harry nilsson's present for ringo starr's christmas was twice as big i mean they just kind of like it was obscene they loved hanging out they loved being together and they just loved and they also you know there was a time when everybody was getting crazy they loved getting crazy together you know they could just go on and on and on and the two of them were like an act you know they were kind of laurel hearty we went to ringo's house once and they had a password and uh harry would say the password to the gate it was something really strange and i don't remember what it was but ringo knew who it was and let him in you know it was that sort of thing it's like the secret password for the clubhouse i know it's impossible another world expects to call me king but i would give anything to be mortal it's not impossible for you to be made human ringo was was the producer and star or co-star of this rock and roll dracula movie probably one of the worst movies ever made it's been it was a great line some movies are released others escape this one this one escaped [Music] had a good time [Music] i don't even remember if anybody directed it or not if they directed it and you know again it was a situation where there was no really nobody kind of driving the train anymore everybody was in the in the cars partying had a good time [Music] ringo and i were very good friends and they had fun together they knew how to go out and have fun i was associated then with the drinking and karasi and because i think keith moon's a friend of ringo's our family and we have good times people who assume you're raising hell if you're having a good time but i promise you folks we don't raise hell but we do have a good time and harry didn't stop at alcohol there were dealers all over the city heading for harry i think helping him to spend his advances and you know harry was like he was going the full ball the full like rock and roll line [Music] each other [Music] harry would come around and trouble would follow very shortly oh dear um well i got that call many times i got the call from harry what are you doing that was the call was a very bad thing i always knew that when harry called it i had to like okay what am i doing okay i'm like i'm ready to take the hairy trip you know get on the hairy ride you know because it's like a ride where you have no idea where it's gonna go it's not on tracks harry was a wonderful perpetrator an arjun provocateur of these things it was lunch on a tuesday at like marc tony marquis three days later i woke up in a massage parlor in phoenix you know and i was like some of those hairy tails i'll have to be like shock therapy to remember oh remember that ah no i mean they're probably out there they're probably lodged somewhere in the cortex but it'll take you know you know well probably years from now go did i really yeah a weed whacker it was fun because it's just you never knew when you were gonna be coming home you know when you when you left the house you know that was the kind of a downside you say hi honey i'm going out with harry and you know and my wife would go oh no when are you coming home this was the first thing she would say [Music] voila what is it i'm full of it good tonight right [Music] but i had my shell of [Music] john was one of a kind i mean there was just no one like him he was tough as nails he was just fearless and just said what he felt you know that's something that he was always ahead he's always a couple steps ahead of you i was just sort of hanging around with harry and nielsen and people in l.a and just getting into trouble and every time we go out for the night i end up in the paper i don't know when it happened it just sort of happened amazing hell with harry became the catchphrase of the month if he wants to go out to have a drink it's party time he'll start it you'll get in trouble and he'll walk away scot-free but he started we're making our big comeback and uh at the troubadour here in the in hollywood and major opening i mean the stars were out to see the smothers brother and i was counting on this is a big comeback the troubadour all the people were invited this mother's brother's been assassinated from television and here they are they applauded like crazy we walk on and we start working there's harry harry comes in with the john lennon and he told john lennie said you know tommy's uh he's not very good you know heckling helps him so these guys came in coked up but really uh cognac and every single moment there was a silence they would be the most disgusting i mean really the worst technique in the world the smothers brothers were of course astounded and blindsided and all of that and harry and john were going to help the show along and become part of the show that's what their idea was four or five sheets to the wind i got drunk and shouted you know uh it was the first night i drank brandy alexander's which is brandy and milk folks and i was with harry nielsen who didn't quite get as much coverage as me the bun and he really encouraged me you know those i usually have somebody there that says okay len and shut up and i take it you know but i didn't have anybody around me to say shut up and i just went on and on harry's got come on let's say it some more and i turned around and i looked at harry said please stop and he goes no no the audience loves i said no they don't i was really pissed at him totally pissed at him well dick and i have a very tight act with great spaces in for timing and every one of them was wrecked and next thing you know the manager came over and grabbed john by the collar and all of a sudden john went back to his little teddy boy days and says wait a minute you don't pull me and the next thing you know the table went flying fists were flying and people were stumbling around and people shout out you you don't have this constant thing finally they were thrown out it was just a disaster when it's errol flynn you know all them showbiz writers say those were the days when we had sonata and errol flynn sucking it to the people you know the real men i do it and i'm a bum so it was a mistake but hell you know well i'm human you know hi you pussycat you say you open up a bicycle wash and the first six customers drown and they pick you up on the wax museum for trying to score with marie antoinette is that what's got you down pussycat well rise up get yourself harry nielsen's new album pussycats produced by john lennon nielsen's latest pussycats on rca records and tapes meow and purr some tracks are beautiful some tracks are a bit weird but uh harry nielsen and john lennon together is a pretty weird combination to have john was like giving harry the best present he could have that almost made up for the fact that his father left him and you know there may be some of you out there saying yeah webb's being the amateur psychiatrist now but i think that that almost made up for it because harry really wanted to be one of the beatles well the relationship with john was like if you see the album pussycats have you ever seen the cover you know they were like in each other's face this was like it was like a duel they were a friendship made in hell as far as i'm concerned john had his troubles harry had his troubles and they got together and really that was that was when harry totally blew his voice [Music] but i just can't [Music] and john lennon were egging each other on as to who could scream the loudest and scream the longest and put the most ragged actually self-destructive vocals on tape as possible it was this one-upmanship friendly kind of thing but like you know i can do anything you can do better no you can't because i can't know you can yourself [Music] i believe it was purposeful not consciously but i believe that he was he was i can't believe i'm getting into all of this first of all i i really i think he was he was some very bizarre reason trying to self-destruct [Music] he told me one time that there was blood on the microphone harry told me he said there was blood on the microphone i drove him to the hospital and he had the throat thing and the polyps and all that stuff and he called me and he says get me out of here bring me a bottle of brandy and a pack of cigarettes into the hospital and i said not the cigarettes but i brought a bottle of randy and he walked out in the green robe just couldn't be bothered you know i never sensed any kind of it's not really happening kind of mild it's just uh it give me a cigarette it was just kind of attitude about everything i was horrified and first of all wondering if he was okay um i was horrified because this very beautiful instrument which he had you held your breath for suddenly because you know what happens now will it ever be the same [Music] that was the saddest thing that ever happened to me in my life was when i realized that he that he that he was in that much trouble vocally and that he didn't know how to tell me and that he didn't want anyone to know and it's just hard for me to talk about it i just can't talk about [Music] [Applause] [Music] do you come [Applause] harry and oona met the most magical way i used to ask for them for my mom to tell me the story again and again my mom who is born in ireland she was born in dublin actually was on a exchange program work exchange program so she was living abroad in new york she was 19 and you know new to america this sweet catholic school irish girl my girlfriend and i were working for the summer we were students and we were working for the summer at rumpelmeyer's ice cream parlor and one evening it was rather quiet evening and both of us were sort of leaning up against the wall and in walked harry sunday night half drunk flask of brandy one pocket copy of u.s news in the other as i walked to my hotel i noticed rumble meyer's ice cream power and there was oona basically the first thing harry ever said to me was you have the most beautiful eyes i've ever seen will you marry me obviously no one had ever said anything like that to me before but it was very special and he said no no really he said what can i do to prove my intent and we said oh well we like flowers and we like melons now you might think that's a very odd thing to say but perhaps i'd never really well i'd never eaten a honeydew melon right went to my hotel showered sobered changed the melons were easy smile was delicate but the flowers that's another question 11 p.m on sunday night august 12 1973 flowers at 11 p.m hey what about the docks right so we actually found a florist he was preparing for a funeral the next morning the end of the evening when my friend and i were getting ready to leave the manager came over and he said there is a man waiting for for you outside the kitchen and we were very excited and we went outside and there was harry leaning nonchalantly against a long limousine and on the pavement beside him he had baskets of flowers and melons and soft toys they were totally not out they hugged me and they hugged me it was the sweetest hug i've ever had and i feel like it's gonna get a whole lot better better than the night before the night i've made her feel like it's gonna get a whole lot better better than the night before [Music] the day of the wedding it was like hell day hangover the limo showed up ringo gave me a tooth for luck so the limo driver gave me a gram for luck and even the father the priest a priest of the church of god knows what shared another gram now i was shaking so much i could barely stand i said to hell with it you only married thrice the wedding ceremony we were married in it was really a suite at the marriott hotel the wedding was organized very very quickly van dyke parks brought a priest somebody else brought flowers and somebody else who hired an accordionist ringo starr was our best man and he was so funny he went to tiffany's and uh took a tray of rings because he did we didn't he didn't know our sizes and he sort of held his tray of rings out for us to choose in two tries he found the right sizes then it was my turn to place the beautiful golden circles on the love of my life ringo said oh look he's shaking and he helped me steady my hands with una and slip on the ring it was perfect [Music] in 1974 harry renegotiated his record deal with rca records and at that time got what i understand to be one of the biggest advances in the history of the record business p.s he did it with the help of john lennon it was john and i with harry and we marched into the president of uh rca at that time and harry says do you know look who's in your office it's john lennon in this piece of record company's office john lennon is here and and john says do you know who stan is this harry nilsson the greatest rock and roll and you're him over there is john giving a speech saying you're going to lose one of the greatest voices of all time you got to resign this man you got to give him a record deal you got to i mean john was just going right for it he didn't care he believed in harry that much the contracts that had sat there unsigned by them for over a year he signed and sent them and harry got his deal [Music] but don't turn out your love tonight [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay harry would go into a session with a sheet of paper and 15 musicians and just one sheet of paper that he has you know and we would start you know to us i mean i'm sure that he had it worked out in his brain but when it got to us it was ideas [Music] you know you get to a certain point and you think you know either i can do this myself or i'm the only one that can do this and nobody else understands me and nobody else can can see this nobody else has the god is vision dead he said oh pal the facts are fact you can't believe that magic i said i don't and that was that harry had a full bar set up in the studio with i mean everything [Music] from corned beef bagels and and bottles of booze any drink you could possibly want chris could i have some scotch some water some matches and some heroin please [Laughter] there would be a lot of people around and it would be full-on drug culture and there would be a sort of a half-hearted attempt at making a record going on and a lot of confusion the line between you know day and night and work and play uh it just disappeared entirely it it was of course it was fun we were all in the bag and laughing and carrying on but it certainly was a silly way to make records okay all right that's certainly worth listening it was a very difficult time for him rca was unhappy um obviously and he wasn't happy you know he was blaming them that they didn't know how to deal with his product and you know and they were blaming him about the albums they were making and it got really uncomfortable and they offered him money to buy him it was a lot of money i remember the day that harry came over and said hey he was laughing he was saying rca victor just gave me three million dollars i'm gonna retire i'm buying apartment buildings i'm doing this and i'm doing that and he was bragging about it and pretending to be happy about it but the truth was he was distraught because they had paid him off they had paid them off they wanted to get out from under the deal he i think he knew that you know that his voice wasn't the same it was i think that i think the rejection the failures were really hard on him you know it was just it was kind of he felt like a has been in a lot of ways and so he turned his attention in other directions [Music] this was a a wonderful opportunity that harry grab we all grabbed you know harry the score writer was wonderful and writing all these wonderful songs and with van dyke parts to be his orchestrator and co-writer for this wonderful movie popeye with robin williams and he's robin's first film actually big connection in papa being in malta big connection uh both it's almost like being a veteran surviving papa aldman thought it was a good idea to take all the musicians to malta which is a crazy idea because they just you know they just took all the drugs in the middle east with them you know and it became this huge party people were lucky to get out alive in the morning [Music] i think the first song you've ever played for was blow me down you know and that was so this is interesting when you're talking like that you know it's like that blue meter it's that he would work with it to try and you know give it a range you know that would still be a character and that's what that's what i remember of it you know him trying to tweak it around the character but still writing the songs [Music] within the song are these wonderful references and i can't i know obviously it's so wonderful i've forgotten them but that's appropriate isn't it we're talking hairy now in those times that it was like um it was just it's very beautiful and i mean a lot of that soundtrack is very elegant john lennon was killed last night the former beatle 40 years old was shot to death as he and his wife yoko ono were walking through the great arched entryway of the dakota the landmark apartment building where they lived in new york i was with harry on the night that john was shot and he was in the studio it was that monday night because we were all watching the football game and all of a sudden the flash came on the screen that said john lennon had been shot and we all freaked and it was like what you know and everything just stopped for me and people just looked at each other and shook their heads and i went in the bathroom and just put a wet towel on my face and just said jesus christ not him it devastated him because i don't think that harry felt that they'd had their last conversation well it was so severe that we didn't talk about it between us i don't think he ever really dealt with it and right after that he went into major gun control he started throwing parties we'd all go to his house and he had a little button with the gun with the x through it and and he started doing that and it was all for john but i really sort of think it was sort of a ghost that stayed with him forever my name is harry nielsen and i'm a national chairman of the end handgun violence week which takes place between october 25th and october 31st if you'd like to help us end handgun violence please write to 100 maryland avenue northeast washington dc 2002 too bad we have so many people dying every year from handgun violence thank you the whole focus of his being seemed to be about trying to get gun control laws and harry who was a very private person and was rarely seen in public went public with this he went on television talking about the importance of handgun control he formed an organization for handgun control he went to washington and lobbied with lawmakers over handgun control not caring about the cost to his career he'd given up songwriting and you know it's like cezanne giving up painting you can't do that once you're a creator you have to keep creating i always really believed along with the other people that harry maybe wasn't choosing his battles wisely you know that he should more been more interested in entertaining harry the entertainer harry the raconteur harry the melodian instead of harry the concerned citizen fighting tooth and nail to get a political lobby for gun control it was caring about the society itself too you know so i think that was um a stronger emotion in him than regretting what he became or what he didn't become um ultimately you might say it was a disappointment really because i don't think our laws have changed a lot in terms of the dangers we're exposed to nothing [Music] you you know the old cliche and most cliches are cliches because they're true behind every great man is a great woman he was totally in love with luna and was very touching extremely touching you know i know he was married twice before and i don't i don't even know their names i know nothing about that you know like the it seemed like you know when he found her that was it [Music] i found some sort of poem he wrote her in which he said there have been of all the great loves that existed in history and he listed off a bunch of couples maybe um romeo and juliet and he said yoko and john harry and oona and una had such a calm aura about her she just whatever he was doing crashing bang or anything she just was there it's nice when somebody actually finds the ballast in their life and i think harry had found it with una she was the anchor yeah good old mom and the other weird part about harry is outrageous as he was he loved his children and all these kids and he was very much about that when any of the children would walk into the room he was just he would light up they were climbing all over him they were on his back they were on his head they were adored cherished treasured hampered given every luxury imaginable and every latitude in terms of their behavior and the way i mean he was absolutely one of the most doting loving dads i've ever seen he was really hands-on being careful being caring and always talking about una and his children they were everything to him and the kids it was kind of contradictory looking because he was out a lot and he wasn't typical certainly not the behalf of cf5 hunting you know that didn't happen in that regard but it was all about them and without them i would shudder to think what would have happened i couldn't possibly think there's nothing left to say a lot of things went domino and at the end they're very bad uh series of circumstances including the threat of bankruptcy and lawsuits it might come from it once again back where he began in the early 90s his business manager who was his accountant who he had trusted implicitly and who had control over all of his money embezzled virtually all of his money his financial world which he was so proud of for his children and for his family all fell apart uh and uh that was a cruel trick and uh and that's what broke my heart for him you know he uh that shouldn't have happened it shouldn't happen to anybody it shouldn't happen to him he got very caught up in trying to you know sell the house trying to get money he was selling off his library of music there's a point that really made me sad because he had all these cds that he was going around to ad agencies trying to sell his songs for commercials to get some money it was um an incredible blow to him and i don't think he ever recovered a man wants to be a success he wants to be a good provider and the things that he had worked for were gone so it was really really hard [Music] the last thing he recorded that was ever released was uh i love new york in june how about you for fisher king i like new york in june [Music] how about you it's a beautiful story well written and uh and wonderfully directed by terry beautifully shot etc harry had to be in this mix romanticism lyricism tunes melody had to be there had to be there those heartstrings had to be pulled it was back in 1991 i'd gotten a a call from harry saying he was going to london to do the fisher king and i asked him if i could go along with him i don't think he was expecting that but he said yes it was a magical magical day and with harry um physically struggling you know his voice had gone by then i mean it was but it was still quite wonderful because he he could always work it he was just his great instrument and uh even his whistle was gone but we still he still whistled in the thing [Music] as soon as he sat down on his stall in the booth with his headphones on it was young harry he was like his oldest son you know his youngest son all wrapped up in one it was just beautiful and the voice was absolutely appropriate for the piece that would turn out to be not only the first but the last time that we would spend a significant amount of time together just the two of us i remember on the last night before i had to leave we agreed to stay up all night in the hotel room talking about whatever and we did around four in the morning he got too tired and he had to he had to go to sleep so i left after that but that's a good memory for me [Music] you [Music] try try try you're a winner if you try try i never saw a nobler human being than harry nielsen in the final couple of years of his life he was as happy and as brave and as confident as any man i've ever seen as ill as he was he pulled his family out of bankruptcy he pulled himself together he faced what he was facing with as much good humor as you could possibly imagine this was 1993 when my dad had a heart attack he felt these chest pains tried to ignore it like it was nothing and then he goes to the doctor and the doctor says hey you've had this major heart attack what are you doing not calling an ambulance after that first heart attack i called him and he said i've had hangovers that were worse and it was a massive heart attack he used a lot of it as a lesson look kids this is what happens if you're a rock and roller all your life and he blamed a lot of that health he would express it to me anyway that that fast living is a not the key to longevity he just sort of told me that's that's the odd thing about it and he just said doug you know he told me you know i got it a year you know what he said yeah just like that and that was that side of him i was talking about before that what was painful he wasn't going to let it out that way i knew that he was in in bad shape i knew that he was trying to get better i knew that he had to be connected to machines every now and then you know oxygen tank and i knew it wasn't good his hair was getting gray and it was just this awful image and so i think i really hid from him for the for the last few months so i don't have strong memories of it except just like just fear and just watching him sort of deteriorate which i couldn't handle you know after a while they'd communicated to him that it doesn't look good so my dad was able to use that opportunity to tell all of us anything that was on his mind and we were able to tell my dad anything that was on our minds on days leading up towards the end [Music] [Applause] he took it as far as his little heart could go nothing more to be asked that was good very honorable man he used to say oh someday you'll be sitting with an interviewer and you'll be saying oh he was such a rogue and he did this and he did that he'd put on an irish accent to mock me you know but he also used to say it'll be okay you'll be a young rich widow you'll be all right you know and i used to say well that's all very well i said but i'll never forgive you [Laughter] this is how we used to talk i'll never forgive you for dying on me so anyway i guess we kept it as light as we could [Music] turn on your radio baby listen to my song i remember one night about a month before he died we went out on the street and we walked about half a block and there's harry's car and we got in and he said i just want you to listen to this with me and he added two or three tapes he took him out and he put him in the sound system and we started listening to harry's songs and we must have listened for a couple of hours and he played one after the other new ones oh and some some that i'd heard before some that i knew he'd written that hadn't gotten recorded that he'd wanted to record some that weren't finished so they were all but they were all rye and tender and funny and vulnerable and sweet and sour at the same time we got to the end and the last song played and the tape player clicked and it was silent in the car and we looked around and santa monica was quiet it was just me and harry in the car he said well he said [Music] that's my life's work he said thanks for listening [Music] and that's the last time i turn saw your radio baby baby listen to my song turn on your night light baby baby i'm gone [Music] the last night of harry's life we'd had a very busy day and we went to bed and we're watching a movie enchanted april i wasn't able to stay awake to the end of the movie and i said oh i'm sorry i'm going to fall asleep and he said i want you to know i love you so much making this so as long as he could and that's the last thing he ever said to me [Music] is [Music] [Music] day i just remember thinking the earthquake like what's going on you know who who designed this series of events i was at a friend's house in topanga cane it threw me half the way across the room it was like it was like harry saying hey [Laughter] i'm not going out like that you know pay attention [Music] funeral was magnificent everybody came a lot of people came tons of people came there was a feeling of um great sadness at the same time stories everybody started telling each other stories stories i had never heard stories probably inappropriate for a 10 year old but everyone had a good story to tell about him throughout the day including the service there were aftershocks and quite severe aftershocks so we're sitting there and i thought well that's really kind of fitting you know because here's harry you know even now he's gone it's still shaking stuff up you know because we're just sitting there like i think the casket would shake you know really surreal there was a huge shake as they were you know during the funeral and said it's harry just got to heaven and found the bars closed when we went to the actual gravesite we're all standing around and george harrison is there looking quite sad and he looks at me and goes you know my favorite harry song and i went it's tough to pick he goes you and i went what i'm thinking that he was like and he goes no you come on let's sing it for harry and around the grave six of his way you're breaking my heart you're tearing it apart so you looking at the casket and when we did that it was such a bittersweet sorrow but there was not a man or a woman around the casket that didn't have that smile on their face that you said to me whenever i say harry nielsen people go harry and that smile at that time was all around [Music] you

Channel: Amplified

Views: 732,887

Keywords: Amplified, amplified channel, music, pop culture, culture channel, documentaries, music documentaries, pop, film, music interviews, film interviews, Harry Nilsson documentary, full documentary, fifth beatle, harry nilsson documentary youtube, harry nilsson (musical artist), beatles, the beatles, nilsson, documentary, john lennon, ringo starr, rock, randy, newman, harry

Id: Je8g10Q3-gY

Length: 113min 42sec (6822 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/not-usually-posting]

Saw this a few years back and it was fantastic. I’m looking forward to watching it again.

[u/FrancisSidebottom]

You can see him with Ringo in the studio during the recording of his early 70s Albums (Nilsson Schmilsson / Son of Schmilsson). You can hear him imitate John and Paul when they call him to tell him how much they enjoy his debut album.... I really enjoyed it. :)